i was obnoxious

Ow! And I so desperately wanted you approval!
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

I'm sure there are a lot smarter people than us messing this up right now as we speak. The underlying problem is that our military is not built to fight political/religious insurrection. Know who had some success with it? The Nazis (well, the Gestapo)- but their "success" was on the political side. When it come to…

It's about measured responses. We can't risk starting WW3 for strategically minor things.

That's just a tad pessimistic. If a US carrier were attacked, there would be hell to pay.
It is something that could happen as a prelude to something bigger, but that's not going to happen anytime soon. Not now. We have the only true blue water navy. All others are pretenders, are on our side, or are geared to hit and…

Lots a beauty pics, there, friend.
Didn't know we had that much hardware over there.

No doubt about that...

Never was aware of that story. Thanks. Looks like the Willie P was the wackiest ship in the navy!

I'd go back and make sure that they filled the av gas lines in USS Lexington with CO2 in the battle of the Coral Sea...

Nice avatar, btw.

It totally would have happened on Gore's watch...

Look; we can, but WE'RE NOT ALLOWED!

I doubt their engines are ready to seriously compete in either output or MTBF. And I believe that they still have a long way to go in training of pilots (on the grand scale, as opposed to elite pilots), ground crew, etc.

I think they're past that.

Honestly, I've never seen this before today. I had the old 60's Hot Wheels Deora diecast toy, but assumed that it was fictitious. Like the Beatnik Bandit - which also turned out to be a real thing. How about that.

OMG! Who the heck thought that this was better than just a friggin' door on the side!?!

Just needs a big-ass push bar!

OMG! Who the hell thought that was better than a friggin' door on the side!?!?

Fair enough. However, a dollar of Chinese defence spending buys a heck of a lot more than a dollar of US defence spending. Engineers don't make anything like they do over here, and production line workers make even less. And I doubt that in China, there are any $400 hammers being paid for... In reality, they're…

Yes, yes, I know. They're also deficient in support training- their military support organizations don't have the skills to effectively support ultra-high-tech systems in the field. But that's changing. If we pretend that our tech lead is perpetual, we're gonna be in for a big shock. They can and will eventually…